During his career on the Panama Canal and after his retirement, Claybourn was involved as a consultant in river and harbor improvement projects in several countries, primarily in Latin America.

In 1928 he then married Elsie Kathryn Grieser, a stenographer on the canal who had attained a measure of celebrity in her youth as a long-distance swimmer and canoeist.

On July 30, 1923, two years after taking the role of superintendent of the Dredging Division, Claybourn wrote a memo to Jay Johnson Morrow, Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, recommending that the Dredging Division shops be moved from Paraiso to Gamboa for two reasons: "First, as a safeguard in case of obstruction of the Cut by slides, the logical location being between any possible dredging and the dumps at Gatun Lake; second, increased Canal traffic, as well as the size of ships, introduces a serious menace to our fleet when moored in the comparatively narrow confines of the Cut at Paraiso.

"[2] Three months later his concerns were validated when the USS O-5 (SS-66) entered Limon Bay, preparatory to transiting the Panama Canal, and was rammed by the United Fruit Company steamer Abangarez and sank in less than a minute.

[4] In 1924, Claybourn created the original design and layout for a new town in Gamboa, Panama, including new facilities to house the canal's dredging division.

In Burma, from 1951 to 1953, he worked to rebuild the transportation network on the Irrawaddy River that was destroyed during World War II, and developed the Dalla Dockyards area near Rangoon.